A visit to Jürgen
Mayer H.'s Metropol Parasol, one of the most daring and controversial urban
interventions to be completed in Europe in recent years.

In his 1964 book Investigations in Collective Form,
Fumihiko
Maki defined the basic concept of megastructure, writing:
"The megastructure is a large frame in which all the functions
of a city or part of a city are housed... In a sense, it is a humanmade
feature of the landscape."

With a height of almost 30 metres and with six supports that
underpin a complex and daringly engineered waffle structure,
the Metropol Parasol by Jürgen Mayer H. could justifiably be
considered a megastructure. Although it does not house all
the possible functions of a city, this new and artificial urban
landscape does contain several of them—commerce, leisure
and public space. It was conceived to revitalise Plaza de la
Encarnación, which was once the intersection between the
cardus and decumanus of the Roman city[1], and the site chosen
in the 18th century for Seville's first drinking water fountain,
reinstating the square as a focal point of the city 200 years
ago. However, the square lost all urban importance in the
second half of the 20th century, following the demolition of
Encarnación Market in 1973. How could a place of such central
importance for the city have ended up unused and closed to
the public for over 40 years?

Curiously, with its gigantic proportions, this megastructure
anchored in the heart of the city seems to have arrived late on
the scene. The economic crisis and political problems currently
beleaguering Spain have made this project the focus of intense
controversy. The same design that won several awards in 2004,
not to mention the tender, now attracts harsh criticism from
both architects and the public.

The new construction
restates the urban quality
of Plaza de la Encarnación:
a historic square which had
been used for many years as
a car park.

A project of such importance and scale as Mayer's could be seen as a radical attempt to initiate a process of
metamorphosis within the urban space. In this respect, some
people judge it as an inappropriate response to the spatial and
historical identity of Plaza de la Encarnación. Equally, however,
one might argue that the project's dimensions and form are
in themselves a protest, highlighting the need to recover the
urban meaning of words such as "square" and "market". In
practical terms, this means bringing back the noise, the people,
the exchange and all the daily hubbub thanks to the attractive
force of this spectacular structure. This space traces out new
lines in a city founded in the eighth century BCE. Although
officially inaugurated on 27 March, and yet to be completed,
the Metropol Parasol has already provoked diverse and
vociferous reactions.

Las Setas, or "the Mushrooms", as it is commonly referred to
among locals, simultaneously constitutes structure, facade
and roof. Its genesis is contemporary, but at heart it is a
baroque form for a baroque city. Mayer's parasols generate an
artificial landscape that sets out to retrieve the emblematic
value of architecture, placing it in a context in which the symbolic is an inherent part of social and cultural history. So why is it provoking so much criticism?

Opinions about the project touch both extremes. Acolytes
of parametric architecture praise the structural design and
bravery of the concept; other architects, meanwhile, see it as
a narcissistic celebration of form that is totally out of scale
and context. Hence it is an urban intervention that engenders
passion and loathing, approval and rejection—but never
indifference.

The frame is made of wood
laminate and steel joined by
means of a heat-resistant
glue. The Parasol is the
world’s largest construction to
be held together with glue, and
one of the most complex ever
to have been built in wood.

It is difficult to appreciate how conservative we become when
our utopias make the jump from designs on paper to concrete
reality; and it is just as hard to come up with an explanation
for this attitude. When, 50 years ago, Archigram, Superstudio
and Archizoom—and many others—designed megastructures
and mobile cities such as those envisaged by Peter Cook or
Yona Friedman, the technical means to build them did not
exist, and all those dreams remained confined to drawings,
magazines and the occasional book. They remained etched in
our collective memory as Paper Architecture. But I sometimes
wonder what might have happened if some of these projects
had actually been built? What would New York be like if it
were crossed from end to end by Superstudio's Continuous
Monument? Or what if Constant had filled the planet with his
New Babylon modules? Would they still seem as romantic to us
as they do in their unbuilt form?

The project’s dimensions and form are in themselves a protest, highlighting the need to recover the urban meaning of words such as 'square' and 'market'

Mayer refers to Metropol Paraasol as a “cathedral without walls”, an architectural
promenade above the
rooftops of Seville.

Could it be that the fascination we feel today for the utopias and radical architecture of the 1960s and '70s stems from the
fact that they are precisely that, unrealised utopias? These
speculative projects attempted to respond to specific urban,
social and political problems at a time of conflict in our history.
But once a utopia is built, the poetic feeling of the impossible is
lost, and the new building enters the category of the probable,
of the achievable. One among many others.

In a certain sense, Jürgen Mayer's project is reminiscent of
Friedman's Mobile Architecture, not only due to its form but also
because it is possible to walk along its upper part, which will
function as a series of panoramic platforms for visitors, leaving
the raised square under the parasols free and open. The lower
level below the square accommodates the new Encarnación
Market, which mixes the tradition of the Seville marketplace
with a shopping mall—traditional trading juxtaposed with
globalised commerce. Against this backdrop, it is important to
pause and reflect on our perception of architecture and the city
today. Do we still believe in utopias?

According to Mayer,
the distinctive curvilinear
forms of the Metropol
Parasol are derived from the
Cathedral consecrated to
Santa Maria de la Sede.

Quoting Jules Michelet's maxim "Each epoch dreams the
one that follows it", Walter Benjamin once posited that
"in dreaming, [each epoch] precipitates its [successor's]
awakening"[2]. Each new adventure of political and historical
dreams, including architecture, advances us towards this
awakening that Benjamin describes. It is probably the word
"awakening" that frightens us and makes us so conservative.
The present climate of deep economic recession has cast grave
doubts as to the feasibility of completing the project, and the
variations in its budget have made it seem all but impossible [3].
It may be that the arrival of "the improbable" takes us by such
surprise that we won't even have time for reflection. We reject
what we are unable to explain. As Gilles Ivain stated in his
Formulary for a New Urbanism [4], we are evolving within a closed
landscape, with points of reference that incessantly drive us
towards the past. However, to this he adds: "Architecture is the
simplest form of articulating time and space, of modulating
reality and engendering dreams."

Detail of the shaft of one
of the umbrella units.

Having visited the city of Seville and experiencing the space of
Plaza de la Encarnación, my immediate reaction was that we
must strive to see the present objectively from the perspective
of the future, resisting the urge to look to the past from the
viewpoint of the present. The forces of retrospection indicated
by Ivain already exist, and always will, but so does our ability
to imagine and define the future.

We will have to wait another 50 years in order to look back
impartially and evaluate how what started out as Paper
Architecture has completed its trajectory towards reality,
adapting itself as a consequence to its surroundings. In
50 years we will probably be dreaming of things that are
unimaginable today, and the Metropol Parasol will likely
be recognised as an innocuous expression of a bygone era.
As long as we architects nurture our ambition to stretch the
boundaries of the possible, there will always be a deranged
"paper architect" or "iPad-architect" there to challenge the
limits of our achievements. Then the question will no longer
be: "Do we still believe in utopias?" Instead, we will be asking
ourselves: "Can utopias grow old?"

Let's hope the answer is an emphatic "NO".

In order not to spoil a
Roman archaeological site,
the waffle frame of the new
complex, built in reinforced,
concrete, wood laminate and
steel, touches the ground at
only six points.

NOTES
1. Division of Seville and its
surroundings into main
sections,
1914.
2. Michelet wrote Chaque
époque rêve la suivante in
Avenir! Avenir!
Europe 19,
no. 73 (15 January 1929).
Walter Benjamin quoted
and paraphrased this in The
Work of Art in the Age of Its
Technological Reproducibility,
and Other Writings on Media
(Belknap Press of Harvard
University, Cambridge, MA,
2008).
3. Los problemas crecen bajo 'las setas'
("Problems grow under
'the mushrooms'"). Article by
Reyes Rincón published in El
País,
25 July 2010.
4. Book of passages by Walter
Benjamin. [L 2a, 6] p. 416.
Notes and materials. Oniric
architecture, museums,
thermal baths. Original title
Das Passagen-Werk,
Rolf
Tiedemann edition, Akal
2004.

The “mushroom-shaped”
structure is set on a base that
accomodates a new market,
an archaeological museum,
bars and restaurants. The
project is designed to create
areas of shade that are vital
to the use of public spaces in
a sun-baked city like Seville.